Dutch A-Class Nationals at Hellevoetsluis

Photo © Nigel Lovett

24 boats from 4 nations completed 7 races in excellent sailing conditions with winds from 8 to 18 knts. Glenn Ashby showed again that he is pretty unbeatable with his Egner Flyer / Fiberfoam mast / and own Landenberger sail and recorded 7 straight wins in a row.

The first 4 races were sailed, all on the up / down gate course and a reach finish. The first race Ashby showed good upwind speed, which could only be followed by Hoekstra and Dwarshuis. Dwarshuis also sailed an Egner Flyer, with a Chris Cairns sail, Hoekstra in a Mk 4 Auscat with an Arjen Kooij sail. Downwind in the shifty conditions and about 8 and 10 knts wind Ashby was better in finding the right windlanes and quickly gained a 200meter lead on Dwarshuis, Hoekstra followed at another 100m. These positions more or less were kept to the finish. Jons Trouw had a good race finishing 4th followed by Piet Saarberg and Clive Everest from the UK. Clive Everest sailed his first A class regatta and did very well. Interesting to note that Clive is co designer of the well known RS600, and was so impressed by the A class performance at the Olympics trial two years ago, that he immediately bought a MK4 Auscat! [it does say something about A class…]

The next three races repeated the first apart from Glenn having a OCS at the second and Dwarshuis breaking his mainsheet shackle in the 4th race. Jorg Horn, Ger 10 [7,4,4,3] proved to be consistent with his brilliant silver coloured flyer and Landenberger sail.

Sunday arrived with more wind, about 18 knts and Ashby was really on a roll now. His Scott Anderson Fiberfoam mast trimmed with maximum prebend [ 50mm + at least] maximum cunningham and little mast rotivation with lots of sheet tension, he was smoking upwind as well as downwind on the flat water of the Haringvliet. Under these great circumstances the Flyer was doing at least 20 knts flying downwind.

With the stronger breeze both the Brits, Clive Everest & Nigel Lovett scored their best results consistantly within the top five through the three races producing a final position of 5th & 8th respectively.

Everyone was convinced Glenn is really difficult to beat at the moment, after seeing him sailing and winning at Keil [German nationals] and here, hopefully he can get things organised to do both the Europeans and the Worlds this season.

As designs progress, the question is still ‘is it the boat or is it the man racing it’. The following list of results indicates that hull designs of 4 years old are still in there, but the sail design is not now dominated by Goodall.

Overall Results: